UXPA Boston Conference 2018

If you're at UXPA, you're no stranger to experience design deliverables: wireframes, UX flows, personas, journey maps, ecosystem diagrams… the list goes on and on. But some of these deliverables have evolved more than others over the years. The UX industry has come a long way from the days of printout annotated wireframes and functional notes- so why are we still creating experience journey maps the same way?

I wondered the same thing!

It turns out, just as new tools and methods have made it easier to more efficiently and effectively prototype, evaluate, and communicate our designs to each other, our users, and our clients, we can also create next generation experience journey maps that illustrate how an experience strategy connects back to foundational user research, UX patterns, and underlying design principles. These interactive deliverables are designed for iteration and adaptation, and can tie in research findings and audiovisual media, as well as supporting materials like personas and narratives. Because they are interactive, teams can use them to better distribute experience strategy insights across an organization, helping manage change and deliver transformation more effectively.

You don't have to wait around for someone to invent a new software package for this type of practice, though. If you have experience design, you have everything you need. This talk will cover some of the most important lessons and practical tips learned from experience creating these very types of artifacts from scratch. It will highlight concrete examples of interactive journey maps we've delivered and answer the most common questions you'll face when you start to create your own.

Don't leave those journey maps to gather dust on the printer tray: Make them interactive!